Communists Anonymous understands the historical incarnations of communism as substantially incomplete in thought and practice, and places communism where it originated—in the realm of fiction. Only as fiction can communism manifest itself again beyond doubt.

Ingo NiermannSolution 257
Complete Love

It’s 2011, late summer. All over Europe, young people are occupying central public squares to demonstrate for more social justice. In Berlin, their agenda is different. The completists gathered at Alexanderplatz aspire for justice primarily on an intimate level. They believe that only when the redistribution of material wealth includes equal chances of finding sex and love—no matter how elderly, disabled, or ugly you are—communism will become real.

Ingo NiermannSolution 264–274
Drill Nation

Having furnished solutions for Germany and Dubai, Ingo Niermann takes a new look at what nationhood can mean and accomplish today, finding inspiration, of all places, in North Korea. Now that the promise of global prosperity and abundance can technically be fulfilled, the time has come for a minimalist rethink of society. By relying on drills and a principle of reduction, the individual can be granted a freedom for experiences and ideas that are not possible otherwise. The more we simplify, the lighter the ballast we’ll have to carry.

Alhena Katsof, Dana YahalomiSolution 263
Double Agent

The phenomenal performative relationship between the state and its cultural institutions was perhaps best exemplified when the declaration of the State of Israel was staged at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 1948. This relationship has been at the heart of Public Movement’s research. Solution 263: Double Agent, authored by Alhena Katsof and Dana Yahalomi, presents a methodology, manual, and performance offered as a culmination of efforts by the Office of Strategy and Protocol. It contains the necessary tools to activate Debriefing Sessions and in doing so trains future Agents in a series of one-to-one exchanges gathered from work in the field.

Michael SchindhelmSolution 262
Lavapolis

The tenth speculation in the Solution series imagines a possible European present and future.

Seventy years ago, the small island nation of Lavapolis was founded. It began as an alternative, a gambling destination to rival Las Vegas, and became a model for a new way of living. With its principle of universal solidarity, the nation counters the pitfalls of contemporary global society. It is an ever-shifting utopia; a volcano jutting out of the Mediterranean Sea; an extension of the open frontier. The biographies of its inhabitants are integral to the whole. If the world backs down from the challenges of Lavapolis, the island is destined to erupt.

Ingo Niermann (Ed.)Solution 247–261
Love

In its ninth volume, the Solution series departs from its previous geopolitical focus on regions and countries. The issue becomes the infinite prospect of connection as well as transformation: this book explores the biopolitical and psychosexual topic of love.

Martti Kalliala with Jenna Sutela and Tuomas ToivonenSolution 239–246
Finland: The Welfare Game

Welcome to Finland, a young land of rapid aging, where newly founded institutions are already outmoded and geographic impediments are a constant crippling agent. As part of Ingo Niermann’s Solution Series, Solution Finland: The Welfare Game by architect Martti Kalliala with writer and curator Jenna Sutela and architect Tuomas Toivonen, addresses the Nordic country’s numerous predicaments.

MomusSolution 214–238
The Book of Japans

As part of Ingo Niermann’s Solution Series, Solution Japan, or The Book of Japans, makes a case for the rehabilitation of the idea of the “far.” The Book of Japans restores a sense of wonder—along with a plethora of imagination-triggering inaccuracies—by taking the reader on a trip not just through space but also time.

Joshua Simon (Ed.)Solution 196–213
United States of Palestine-Israel

Solution 196–213: United States of Palestine-Israel is an anthology of texts proposing a doable solution for the region. With contributors based in Ramallah and Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Beirut and Jerusalem, New York and Bethlehem, Nazareth and Warsaw, the book offers solutions that will make life better, and proposes ways to do it.

Ingo NiermannSolution 186–195
Dubai Democracy

Solution 186–195: Dubai Democracy is the fifth book in the Solution series. Using Dubai as a sort of modernist blank slate for urban and social renewal, author Ingo Niermann confronts today’s most relevant cultural and technological developments with analytical elixirs that are as pertinent as they are unbelievable.

Tirdad ZolghadrSolution 168–185
America

Solution 168-185: America is the fourth book in the Solution series. Opting for the United States of America—which the author says is “still the most proficiently colonial place” [he knows]—Tirdad Zolghadr provides a compilation of highly entertaining “solutions” for a nation suspicious of progressive politics yet rich in its history of harboring and cultivating the avant-garde.

Ingo NiermannSolution 1–10
Umbauland

In Solution 1-10: Umbauland, Ingo Niermann devises ten provokingly simple ideas which would see Germany work it out after all, including a new grammar, a new political party, assigning allotment gardens to unemployed people and retirees, and the Great Pyramid, the tallest building of the world which would serve as a democratic tomb for millions of people.

MomusSolution 11–167
The Book of Scotlands

At a time when functional independence seems to be a real possibility for Scotland—and yet no one is quite sure what that means—a delirium of visions, realistic and absurd, is necessary.

Ingo Niermann, Jens Thiel (Eds.)Solution 9
The Great Pyramid

German entrepreneurs are planning to outstrip the ancient Egyptians by building the world’s largest pyramid on a derelict site in eastern Germany – which they claim will eventually contain the remains of millions of people in concrete burial blocks.The Independent